


Fifteen

by Spylace



Series: Odachi [1]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 19:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15735984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spylace/pseuds/Spylace
Summary: Takeshi is fifteen when his father dies.





	Fifteen

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I wrote way back when KHR was still a thing.
> 
> I missed Yamamoto.

He comes home one afternoon, after baseball practice, fretting about the next game and Koujiro as an Akita. The sushi shop’s door is closed, a little unusual but not unheard of. Perhaps his father had tired after the large order the Hidaka LLC placed the night before. He calls for his father and how much he appreciated the fried shrimps in his lunch. But he stops when his daemon stands by the doorway, hackles raised and fangs bared.

“Come back Takeshi!”

“Koujiro?”

And his entire world shatters in that one moment.

It’s only sheer luck that he manages to dodge the knife aimed at his eye. He lets out a surprised yelp before falling gracelessly backwards. The stranger’s daemon, a boar with jutting tusks, tackles Koujiro and slams him against the doorway. Something breaks and both the boy and the canine lets out a strangled scream from the shared pain. The stranger berates his daemon for causing noise. The boar’s whiskered ears droop and she lets her quarry fall boneless back on the ground.

The stranger tsks about time and money, Takeshi is too busy trying to find a way to get to Koujiro. The dog moans, his yellow eyes glazed. The stranger kicks the teen in his kidneys and pulls him into a sitting position. Takeshi is scared and his terror is echoed within his daemon that bays before the stranger’s boar stabs him with her tusks. The stranger holds up his left wrist and slits it from the base of his palms down to his elbows. Takeshi can’t even scream this time. He can only watch in muted horror as blood wells up and spills down his arm.

“Sorry kid, you know how these things are.”

And strangely enough he does know, and he knows—knows—that the only reason this can be is because his father is dead.

The stranger plunges his knife down the other arm. Takeshi struggles as he bites into the stranger’s cuffs, swallowing a button and choking on it. Then there is a cry, a scream as the stranger suddenly lets him go.

Koujiro, his Koujiro who had been ready to settle as an Akita, shifts for the first time in days. The change is unpleasant and curdles his belly with nausea. Koujiro lets out a deafening roar and the boar daemon cowers before him. She squeals and turns around, tail raised in panic as she opens her mouth to warn her human.

Koujiro swats her back with a massive paw. It snaps the boar’s raised back and sends her headlong into a chair. She turns to dust before gravity can pull her to the ground. The stranger’s eyes roll to the back of his head. The tiger daemon pushes past the kneeling corpses and nuzzles his boy, rough tongue scraping the cold sweat off his face and neck, his pink nose bloodied from smelling Takeshi’s wrists.

“Koujiro the phone,” the teen gasps, “get... help.”

 

Takeshi wakes up in the hospital with Koujiro tucked against the side of his neck, promises of safety in his ear. He is given a modicum of sympathy from the investigators, half-hearted condolences from his teachers, and the occasional tears. Then his aunt arrives and he has to stop Koujiro from flying at her face. His aunt looks as severe as ever, her husband following meekly in her awake. She idly asked about his well-being and how he is coping after the tragic death of his father.

Koujiro quivers angrily and shifts into a floppy-eared hound. His aunt’s daemon, a rooster named Susumu* sings his lament over how it was unfortunate that the teen’s daemon had yet to settle. Nettled by the comment and feeling faint, Takeshi demands calmly,

“What do you want auntie Mayuu?”

“So rude,” tuts his aunt and slowly takes out an envelope from her purse. They are documents for his house—the sushi shop—and the declaration for his emancipation. It seemed that none of his relative wanted to take him in. Takeshi isn’t surprised. But it still hurts somehow. Koujiro licks his ear and retorts that the shop is theirs; Yamamoto Tsuyoshi would have left it in their name.

Yamamoto Mayuu looks genuinely regretful for once and says that the agreement is for others to care for the shop until Takeshi is of age.

“I’m sorry Takeshi, but you know how this family is. Once blood is in the water...”

“You should be grateful.” Susumu croaks, his neck puffed indignantly. “The others would have thrown you out with nothing but the clothes on your back.”

There are a million and one things running through Takeshi’s mind. He wants to ask, what about them? Who would take care of them? What about baseball? What about school? Isn’t there anyone who was willing to take them in? Anyone at all? How will he live? And all those questions lead in only one direction.

“There are some things in the house...” he starts carefully, gauging his aunt’s reaction. Mayuu grimaces, standing up. Susumu flaps his wings, balanced on her shoulders. His uncle’s daemon, a dragonfly, takes flight.

“I can’t promise anything.”

And he nods though she can’t see it. His uncle lingers behind, half-nervous on his feet as though there are things out to get him—they both know there are things out to get them if they stray from the scripted path—and says in a hushed tone,

“There’s a trust fund set up you know, just until you graduate high school.” He smiles encouragingly, the nervous tick obvious in his left eye. His daemon lands on top of his head, transparent wings fluttering in the sun. For a moment, Takeshi feels pity for the man who was roped into marrying a Yakuza advisor. “You shouldn’t worry too much, it will be alright, you’ll see.”

 

They leave.

There is nothing else left for them.

Koujiro’s mane is soaked with tears but they have to move on. He grabs whatever he can from home and drops out of school. With a gym bag filled with nothing but swords and rolls of yen stuffed in a sock, he leaves town in the dead of the night. Koujiro shifts frequently, easily, like he had when he was younger, playing games under the covers at night. It certainly makes it easier for them to drop out of sight, out of mind. Takeshi is tall for his age, everyone assumes that his daemon should have settled—he knows that Koujiro should have settled—and doesn’t keep track of who he is or where he is going.

By the time he reaches Aomori prefecture in Tohoku, he is completely out of cash. For a week he lives on the edges of cities, stealing food and sleeping on park benches. He considers selling one of his swords and just as quickly dismisses the idea. He checks the trust fund that was supposedly set up for him and sees that true to his word, his uncle has created an account in his name.

And it’s so tempting—he’s so hungry and filthy. But Koujiro pecks his cheeks and he slowly walks away from the ATM machine.

He cannot be found.

Lifetime of warnings from his father and Sayuri has taught him that. His family wasn’t above familicide to get in their clan head’s good graces, which meant that he had to reach him first. Boats and railways were probably being monitored but they didn’t know what to look for. There had to be hundreds of teenagers filtering in and out of Aomori station everyday right?

He holds Koujiro close, feeling his stomach growl as despair washed over him. His daemon pecked him again,

“Come on, I’m hungry. We can go to the supermarket. Let’s find food first then we can think about how we’re getting to... wherever we’re getting to.”

“I don’t know ‘Jiro, there are plenty of bugs in the park.” Takeshi smiles sunnily, a first in a long time. Koujiro shifts into a parrot, reds and greens sprouting across his chest and face.

“You can’t call me that,” the bird daemon complains squawking as Takeshi breaks out into a run. “I was born first!”

 

 

He pickpockets enough money to buy a train ticket. Koujiro helps of course, hard to report theft when the thief’s daemon keeps changing. He manages to sneak into the onsen at night to wash himself and do laundry. There is no time limit so he dozes on the wet stones while his daemon splashes about and makes a nuisance of himself.

At the crack of dawn they set out, their bellies full with the boiled eggs stolen when the man at the counter wasn’t looking. Koujiro slips in a carton of milk in his bag and he is thankful. They chat cheerily as they wait for their train to arrive and feel the blankness in their lives dissipating as they travel closer and closer towards Sapporo station.

Trouble begins when they arrive and he has to find the bathroom. Koujiro rolls his eyes and hangs onto the back of his shirt as they enter a filthy bathroom. Takeshi points out that they should be fine as long as they don’t touch anything. The lemur sniffs and immediately shifts into a form that lacks a sense of smell. But he continues to pant harshly and Takeshi touches the pigeon’s head in concern when he sees a flicker of movement in the mirror.

He holds his bag up as someone swings a bat at his head. His would be assassin swears, snarling past the cigarette at his lips as he swings low, hoping to catch the teen in the stomach. Takeshi doesn’t give him that chance.

The man slumps to his knees, gurgling as his daemon bursts into dust. Takeshi finds that his hands are shaking and Koujiro purrs, his emerald eyes half closed as he comforts his human in the only way he knows how. Takeshi takes several deep breaths before he can reciprocate, breathing into the feline’s striped shoulders.

“It’s okay,” Takeshi murmurs, “It’s going to be okay.”

“Of course it will, I’m going to protect you.”

This elicits a soft chuckle from the fifteen year old.

“I didn’t see you doing anything when he was swinging that bat at me.”

“But you’re always saying how good you are at baseball.”

He leaves the throwing knife in the man's throat.

Takeshi swings his gym bag over his shoulders and steps out of the bathroom.

Outside, Hibari is waiting for him. He hasn’t changed much. A year of separation shows him a man grown, the head of the Muratori family. Without a word of acknowledgement, Hibari buries a tonfa in the side of the entrance preventing escape—not that he was planning to, he was looking for Hibari after all—and swings the second at his neck.

Takeshi is ready this time and grabs for a sword in his bag.

Except, it isn’t a blade. It’s the milk that Koujiro stole for him.

The carton explodes in his hand and sprays everyone in the vicinity with milk. His wrist breaks from the force of the blow but saves his life. Koujiro yowls in pain and shifts into a pit-bull to keep the Muratori family head at bay. The other’s daemon, a porcupine, lumbers forward bristling her long quills in his face.

Takeshi grabs Koujiro’s tail with his good hand,

“I was going to drink that!”

The young man scoffs, pushing past Takeshi to retrieve his tonfa. He grimaces in disgust at the liquid dripping off of his clothing and kicks Takeshi in the ribs. Takeshi dodges, Koujiro a vibrating moth in the cup of his hands.

“The man who was sent to kill you, did you kill him?”

Takeshi blinks and chuckles ruefully,

“Same old Hibari.”

“Answer the question.”

“Yes.” And he turns to grab his bag, leaving his back exposed to the family head.

“Hn... You’re the same old foolish herbivore as always.”

Koujiro makes a hissing sound as a cricket.

“Ha ha, I wouldn’t know about that.”

Hibari shoots the teen a guarded look.

“You are young and stupid, therefore very much same in my eyes.”

Takeshi laughs again.

The Muratori head sighs, “Why are you here?”

“I wanted to offer my services.”

Hibari huffed.

“You said ‘no’ last time.”

Takeshi smiles broadly, looking strained. “I can’t change my mind?”

The teen’s daemon is a black adder curled tightly around his collar. Hibari’s daemon, Tamizuki, looks up at the serpent with interest. It’s rare to see a daemon Koujiro’s age retain the ability to shift. If anything, the transformation should have been slow, gradual. Rarer still is a daemon with the same gender as their human. She and Hibari share a look before he replies,

“Not you.”

“You owe us,” Koujiro rasps, his beady eyes glittering. “You’re supposed to protect your own. He was doing reconnaissance for you! He died on your watch.”

“Hardly,” Hibari can feel his lips curl, “Takeshi Tsuyoshi is dead because he was weak.”

A terse moment, Hibari half-expects the young man to lunge at him. It would have been welcomed; he had always wondered what made the teen tick. Takeshi takes a deep breath. Hibari is almost disappointed—almost.

Tamizuki rattles her quills in amusement.

“I can’t go home.”

“Yamamoto clan has always been zealous of their respective positions. That’s what makes them so valuable as subordinates.”

“My father’s position’s empty, I can fill it.”

“Your family doesn’t agree.”

“And you?” Takeshi asks flatly, his finger petting his daemon under the delicate jaw line. “What do you think?”

Hibari smiles, seeing at last the glimpse of potential that ensnared him the first time he laid eyes on the young man.

“I think you’re evolving.”


End file.
